DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14563#0146
CHAPTER XV.
ORIENTALIZING — A VILLAGE COFFEE-HOUSE.
As I sat writing this morning in my cabin while the boat
was driving before a stiff north wind — most welcome after
days of calm — I felt a sudden shock that indicated that
she had brought up against the bank, and hurrying out,
had barely time to spring ashore for a walk with the re'is
and the dragoman, who were going by a short cut to a
distant town to buy provisions, and there to await the arri-
val of the boat by the winding of the river. Sliaheen, a
tall and well-proportioned Arab who had taken a fancy to
accompany us in our walks, went also as a sort of escort,
armed with his club against barking dogs and imaginary
robbers. The suddenness of my exit had left no time for
inquiry, and it was not till I had mounted the steep bank,
and had strained my eyes to see the farthest palm-trees,
that I realized what a walk I had undertaken. Our way
lay across one of those vast deposits of alluvium under the
lee of the mountains, for which the Upper Nile is so
remarkable. The bald projection of Gebel Shehh Hereedee
— a long table mountain of a yellowish stone, some five
hundred feet high, that juts out from the Arabian chain —
lay immediately behind us on the north-east, and a broad
plain of mixed clay and sand, that the washings of the river
had deposited, stretched for miles around its base ; while
the river bent its course westward toward the Lybian chain,
ORIENTALIZING — A VILLAGE COFFEE-HOUSE.
As I sat writing this morning in my cabin while the boat
was driving before a stiff north wind — most welcome after
days of calm — I felt a sudden shock that indicated that
she had brought up against the bank, and hurrying out,
had barely time to spring ashore for a walk with the re'is
and the dragoman, who were going by a short cut to a
distant town to buy provisions, and there to await the arri-
val of the boat by the winding of the river. Sliaheen, a
tall and well-proportioned Arab who had taken a fancy to
accompany us in our walks, went also as a sort of escort,
armed with his club against barking dogs and imaginary
robbers. The suddenness of my exit had left no time for
inquiry, and it was not till I had mounted the steep bank,
and had strained my eyes to see the farthest palm-trees,
that I realized what a walk I had undertaken. Our way
lay across one of those vast deposits of alluvium under the
lee of the mountains, for which the Upper Nile is so
remarkable. The bald projection of Gebel Shehh Hereedee
— a long table mountain of a yellowish stone, some five
hundred feet high, that juts out from the Arabian chain —
lay immediately behind us on the north-east, and a broad
plain of mixed clay and sand, that the washings of the river
had deposited, stretched for miles around its base ; while
the river bent its course westward toward the Lybian chain,